Minutes From ALFCA Summer Board of Directors Meeting

August 1, 2017

The Alabama Football Coaches Association Board of Directors was called into session by executive director Jack Wood on Thursday, July 20th at 10:15 AM at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Montgomery. Coach Wood opened the meeting by welcoming new board members Jimmy Perry of St. James representing District 3 and Norman Dean of Elmore County representing District 4. Perry replaces Randy Ragsdale of Trinity Presbyterian who retired this spring and Dean replaces Brian Blackmon of Opelika who took a job with Auburn University.

Coach Wood discussed the finances of the ALFCA and declared the association to “be in good shape.” Coach Wood went over the sponsor list and talked about the importance of these entities to the success of the ALFCA, and how loyal many of them had been to the association through the years. He said that the membership packet mail outs would go out to the schools around August 4th and thanked administrative assistant Jennifer Byrd for her help with that project. He also reminded the board that the next meeting would be at Super 7 in Tuscaloosa. He stated the importance of the Super 7 meeting to everyone due to the selection of the Coach of the Year Awards at that time.

The ALFCA will once again provide helmet grants (4 @ $2500) at the 2018 ALFCA Convention. The work is already underway to secure speakers for the event, and Coach Wood requested the board to bring any suggestions they might have for speakers to him in the coming days. Board members working on the selection committees are as follows: 1A/2A- Richie Busby of Fultondale and Andro Williams of W.S. Neal; 3A/4A- Jimmy Perry of St. James and Rodney Stidham of Hamilton; 5A/6A/7A- Ben Blackmon of Spanish Fort and Jere Adcock of Decatur. President Terry Curtis of UMS Wright will handle the Lifetime Achievement Awards and Coach Wood will handle the Bob Pannone Award.

Coach Steve Savarese, executive director of the AHSAA came and spoke to the board. He asked the board to encourage the coaches in their districts to speak up and promote the values of high school football. Attacks on football from outside sources continue and he said he has “strong concerns” about what might happen to our game in the future. Coach Savarese also discussed the concerns about recruiting and talked about some of the problems surrounding states were having in that area. He also said that he had hopes that the NFHS was going to approve Alabama to institute replays in championship football games on a trial basis. He asked for the ALFCA to help with some of the guidelines he would need to submit to the NFHS before it could be approved.

Coach Wood discussed the desire of the association to take a giant step forward with the ALFCA website and Twitter account. He stated that it is something that needed doing for a long time, and that the ALFCA intended to provide a much needed service for its members with a creative website. He also hoped that through Twitter, the association could better communicate with its membership on a daily basis. Coach Wood recommended to the board that the ALFCA hire former T.R. Miller coach Jamie Riggs to run the ALFCA website and the Twitter account. After the board voted unanimously for the motion to hire, Coach Riggs entered the room and spoke briefly about some of the plans he had in the near future for the ALFCA website and Twitter account.

The board had a brief discussion about the USA Football/ALFCA 7 on 7 Tournament in Montgomery. The event was outstanding, and there were a number of improvements over last year. There was hope for more teams next summer. Coach Wood thanked the City of Montgomery and Coach Steve Bailey for their help with the tournament. President Terry Curtis finished the meeting with a discussion about the concerns of coaches about recruiting. Possible solutions were discussed and the board talked about the possibility of writing a legislative proposal in the coming year.